o between rows of lofty poplars.

"I assure you that we are doing wrong," the young man repeated. "They
will blame me, and they will be right."

"Oh! well," cried she, "I'm amusing myself. This bicycle bath is quite
funny. Leave me, then, if you don't love me enough to follow me."

He followed her, however, pressed close beside her, and sought to
shelter her a little from the slanting rain. And it was a wild, mad race
on the part of that young couple, almost linked together, their elbows
touching as they sped on and on, as if lifted from the ground, carried
off by all that rushing, howling water which poured down so ragefully.
It was as though a thunder-blast bore them along. But at the very moment
when they sprang from their bicycles in the yard of the farm the rain
ceased, and the sky became blue once more.

Rose was laughing like a lunatic, and looked very flushed, but she was
soaked to such a point that water streamed from her clothes, her hair,
her hands. You might have taken her for some fairy of the springs who
had overturned her urn on herself.

"Well, the fete is complete," she exclaimed breathlessly. "All the same,
we are the first home."

She then darted upstairs to comb her hair and change her gown. But to
gain just a few minutes, eager as she was to cook the crawfish, she did
not take the trouble to put on dry linen. She wished the pot to be on
the fire with the water, the white wine, the carrots and spices, before
the family arrived. And she came and went, attending to the fire and
filling the whole kitchen with her gay activity, like a good housewife
who was glad to display her accomplishments, while her betrothed, who
had also come downstairs again after changing his clothes, watched her
with a kind of religious admiration.

At last, when the whole family had arrived, the folks of the brake and
the pedestrians also, there came a rather sharp explanation. Mathieu
and Marianne were angry, so greatly had they been alarmed by that rush
through the storm.

"There was no sense in it, my girl," Marianne repeated. "Did you at
least change your linen?"

"Why yes, why yes!" replied Rose. "Where are the crawfish?"

Mathieu meantime was lecturing Frederic. "You might have broken your
necks," said he; "and, besides, it is by no means good to get soaked
with cold water when one is hot. You ought to have stopped her."

"Well, she insisted on going on, and whenever she insists on anything,
you know, I haven